The documents produced by the owners of estates are the most voluminous of English records. This is partly because property and property law lay at the heart of English law and society. It is also because the meaning of an ‘estate’ was much wider and more embracing than it might be today. It encompassed not only rights in objects, land and housing, but also rights in and over people, for instance the rights to certain services and the rights to hold courts. Thus a manor consisted not only of such things as ‘house, arable land, meadow, pasture, wood, rents, advowson …’ but also of ‘services and of a court baron’ (Jacob 1744:s.v. manor). Thus when we survey the records of an estate we are often dealing with matters with little direct bearing on rights in land.

The rules which governed the holding and transmission of estates, as well as the decisions in the courts held by individuals who were lords of an estate, were based on a mixture of the common law and local custom. The principles upon which law and custom operated were very similar. The basic difference was that customs were specific to certain places, while general customs constituted the common law. A custom must be ancient, must have continued without interruption, must be certain and must be reasonable. It must also apply to a group of people, not just one individual, and must not be against the King's prerogative. We shall see some of these principles in action in the ensuing description.